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User blog:Dessertmonkeyjk/Revamping the wiki
Hello, it's your friendly neighborhood admin Dessertmonkeyjk with a new blog post. I felt that this would be the best place to deliver an update on what's been going on with the wiki as of late. New Main Page The first thing you've probably noticed recently is that the Main Page looks alot differently than it did before. That was my own doing and I've announced the possibility on reworking it before on the forums. The main reason why I decided to overhaul it was to do several things: *Focusing on making the Main Page being the main portal for navigating to majority of content on the wiki. *Splitting the Main Page into modules for different kinds of information as well as making it easier to manage each separately within templates. *Increasing discoverability of articles and categories by providing a Table of Contents module. *Providing links to wiki community pages such as help, policy, and site maintenance pages. For a long while, I felt that the majority of the content on the wiki was not easily discoverable to the average reader. This is bad from the standpoint of any reader looking for content in a broad sense as they don't know what is available in the first place and would not know where to look. For example, did you know that this article about the Community Minecraft Server exists? You do now... because I just told you and provided a link leading to it. You most likely had no idea it was even there. You also probably don't know that Crass Wrestling Federation is a thing. I don't know why either of these two things are on here but there they are. Local Wiki Policies You might of noticed that there are now some policy articles popping up which notes general rules and guidelines for the I'm A Speedrunner wiki. Again, this was mainly my doing as there have been some instances in the past in which there was some confusion on what is and isn't wanted and procedures for users and admins to follow in certian operations. The thing I want to note though about these new policies is that since I'm the one who made them, it would be rather unwise to put these into practice until there is general consensus aka agreement amongst the majority of community members. These policies affect EVERYONE on the wiki so I hate to cause an incident of forcing them down people's throat without consent first. Also feel free to propose any changes to these policies in either the comment section or forums if you got anything you wish to address about them. Wikia policies still appies as it does for all wikis under the Wikia domain so that hasen't changed. Pre-loaded Article Layouts If you would, go ahead and attempt to create a new page... in a new tab mind you, I want you to still read this. You'll notice that two things will happen that didn't before. First, the option to pick either a blank or standard article layout is now gone and you'll be sent straight to the editing page. Second, you'll notice a new section at the top lined with several green buttons. Now go ahead and click on one of those buttons, would you? Aside from the editor page reloading and, annoyingly, prompting you to type in the name of the article again, you'll notice that the article has now been filled with pre-defined text based on the button you clicked. What you essencially just witnessed is the use of Pre-loaded Templates which allows you to quickly load in content for a new article. Pretty cool, huh? I didn't even know this thing existed until recently but by using this, it is now easier for both new and returning editors to quickly add articles for common topics with consistant formatting. No longer do you have to have to go and copy and paste from another article or write it from scratch as this does this for you. Do note though that this only shows up when creating a new article and should be used to quickly get started. You can edit it as you see fit but to keep things consistant you'll want to avoid changing it too much or the article may be marked with a cleanup tag. Other things The other things that have been done recently that are rather breif are the following things below: *Mass deletion of unused media files - There have been alot of files that have been left unused on the wiki and have been deleted because of it. Lucky for me that a thing like BatchDelete exists. *Deletion of unwanted articles - These unfortunately came mostly from PPB001 which included articles on Dazzy, Video Games, Consoles and others that have little to do with I'm A Speedrunner and some of which were copied straight from Wikipedia. Don't add articles with content that can be found on other wikis unless there is relevent information specific to I'm A Speedrunner or related events included as well. *CSS classes and styles - I have recently discovered the wonders of using CSS classes for applying styling to content such as tables and text. This means that instead of typing a style for every table, per column, per row... and per cell *shutters*, I can use a pre-defined CSS class that applies it in one line. *Wiki extensions - I added some extensions to the wiki to help with matinence and also for some functional athstetics. For example, all user who are admins (like me) now have their name highlighted in gold. This makes it easy to identify who is an admin on the wiki. Additionally, you'll see some tags on a user's page with a similar color as well as for ones noting if they're inactive. Closing out Well, that's mostly everything. I hope you weren't freaking out about some of the things that were happening... and I can always change it back if you need me to. With that all said, I'll go back and do... admin things. For example, I'm looking for things to tag, things to update, and overall just be Mr. Matinence. See you around the wiki! P.S. I would really, REALLY apperciate it if you can help me out with some things as it's been mostly just me as of late. Mataining a wiki is not a one-man job, it's a community job... so can you help out? Please? With a cherry on the top? Category:Blog posts Category:News